Page:Copyright, Its History And Its Law (1912).djvu/291

Rh the later case of West Pub. Co. v. Thompson Co., where the publishers of the original reports and digests sought to restrain the Thompson encyclopaedias, the Circuit Court of Appeals held that while a compiler may use a copyright digest by making lists from which to run down cases, which is "fair use," extensive copying or paraphrasing of the language of the digest, whether to save literary work or mechanical labor, constitutes an infringement. The case was sent back to the lower court for rehearing and assessment of damages and was settled in 1911 by an agreement involving transfer of the encyclopaedia to the plaintiff. Reference to a copyright work giving pagination is not an infringement, as was decided in 1909, in Banks Law Pub. Co. v. Lawyers Co-operative Pub. Co., in the U. S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

Whether simple quotation constitutes an infringement or is "fair use," depends upon extent and in some respects upon purpose. In 1892 Justice North, in the English Court of Chancery, in Walter v. Steinkopff, held that the use by the St. James Gazette of two fifths of an article by Kipling, copyrighted by the Times, was beyond "fair use" of quotations, notwithstanding the newspaper custom of copying from one another. On the other hand, quotations in a review of a book made to reasonable extent for the purposes of criticism, have usually been considered "fair use," provided they do not go to the extent of a description or abridgment which would be measurably a substitute for the book.

The multiplication of copies by handwriting or other process for private use, as among the members of an orchestra or in a business office, has been held an infringement in English decisions, though prohibition of the making of a single copy for personal use would be an extreme application of this doctrine,